Limbo
by Golden Disasters
Summary: He tries to write to her, because who else in eternity will listen? Companion to thetickingclock 's "Breathless."


This is a companion letter to thetickingclock 's "Breathless," written for an English class assignment. Find hers at

s/9273197/1/Breathless-**Read this one first. **

My dear Hazel Grace,

Can you hear me? I think you can. I don't know how, but I know you're there. I know you're listening.

I will start with the trivial things first, because right now it hurts too much to be emotional. You'd think that there wouldn't be pain here, but somehow even that followed me into the afterlife.

I'm so glad that Isaac can laugh again. See, if he can do it, so can you. This all shall pass, Hazel Grace. I can promise you that. Laughing, it is something that feels like an impossibility right now, but one day you will feel it bubbling up throughout your insides as if it had never left, and you won't even have the time to be surprised.

Go over to my parents house for dinner more often. I think they miss you. You're part of the Waters family now, whether or not you like it. The name Waters will follow you like an annoying rash _forever. _There is no getting rid of us!

One thing that will never end for me is time. And because of this, and because of the lack of distractions for me, I've been thinking. Next to the Augustus-shaped hole in your heart, there is room for someone else. That someone else won't be me. They won't think like me, and they won't talk like me, and they certainly won't be as good looking as me. Those points aside, I want you to love them. I don't want you to wake up every day and compare him to me. I want you to find happiness, and if that means letting me go for now, then so be it . A mother should give her children a superabundance of enthusiasm; that after they have lost all they are sure to lose on mixing with the world, enough may still remain to prompt fated support them through great actions. You may not be a mother, but you need to be there to instill that in the person who fills your second hole. They need you, just as much as I do. But you will _always_ be with me. Okay? Okay.

There's too much air up here, Hazel. There's so much space that I can't breathe. An immense sadness as of loss invaded my spirit on the way up, a vast homesickness for some immutable refuge of the heart. I told you once that I fear oblivion, and I fear darkness. I wanted to face that vortex before I left, though, and I never got the chance. I didn't even get to go with the clangor of an atomic bomb, the way I wanted. I was snuffed out like an innocent candle. You see, I do not even get the privilege of facing my fears any longer, and that fact seems to stab me in the heart with every rise of the infinite sun. (Be careful what you wish for-I am permanently stuck inside a vessel that is forever chasing the sunrise.)

Promise me, Hazel Grace. Promise you will go out into the world, oxygen tank or no, and you will beat down every single fear that shudders inside of your lovely head. Promise me that when your time comes, you won't have any regrets. I want you to go with bravery, because up here, you're going to need it. Up here, you have to face yourself.

I told that infallible idiot Van Houten that you tread lightly upon your earth, and you do. Do not feel as if your thoughts are creating craters with every step you take. You walk with beauty. There is a poem, one that seems to ring in my mind nowadays, though I can't remember where I heard it. Perhaps something about this place stirs up things that have importance, though only to a heart that no longer beats for life. (Ah, the Great Perhaps. Have you heard of it?) This poem, it practically screams _Hazel Grace. _It goes, _"She walks in beauty, like the night/ Of cloudless climes and starry skies/ And all that's best of dark and bright/Meet in her aspect and her eyes/Thus mellowed to that tender light/Which heaven to gaudy day denies."_

I will leave you with that. I'm waiting for you, but please, take your time. I want to be selfish and reel you up to my side this instant, but something in my damned soul is catching my hands before I can begin to move. Live your life in beauty, and always remember that I love you. I love you like the bubbles in pink champagne, and I love you like thunder sends reverberations into the earth, and I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you.

Augustus

PS. Bring some cigarettes up with you, would you? I miss them like _hell. _


End file.
